A Welcome Intruder
This Friday Steve Jones asked about penetration testing of your security. Have any of you ever tested your systems?
Announcing Red Gate SQL Test
SQL Test is a new unit testing plug-in which allows you to seamlessly write, run and manage tests within SQL Server Management Studio. Download the preview release now.
Working with the XML Data Type in SQL Server
The XML data type, introduced in SQL Server 2005, is a powerful construct. When used wisely, it can provide useful extensions to SQL Server. Robert Sheldon, in the first part of a series, describes how create and index a XML column in a table, and discusses when you should consider using an XML data type.
Fast Migrations
Virtualization is an important technology for anyone working with servers, and as vendors look to improve the performance of their hypervisors, this technology might be more important for data professionals to understand.
Mind mapping software - How it can help the DBA
Mind mapping software allows the rapid capture of thoughts and ideas. It is a killer app that can easily help a busy DBA capture their thoughts
Getting Started with SQL Server Report Builder 3.0
SQL Server offers a simple tool for business users to perform ad-hoc reporting.
A Refreshing Break
Steve Jones talks about his recent vacation break and one change that made it a huge success.
Administrating SQL Server Reporting Services – Planning, Documenting and Troubleshooting
DBAs are often short on guidance on how to go about such tasks as planning, documenting and troubleshooting those aspects that are specific to the SSRS service. Feodor Georgiev gives some tips, custom SSMS reports, and useful TSQL queries.
Blogs
A bespoke reporting solution doesn’t have to cost the earth
By ChrisJenkins
You could be tolerating limited reporting because there isn’t an off the shelf solution...
Presenting with Visual Studio Code
A while back I wrote a quick post on setting up key mappings in...
Advice I Like: In 100 Years
By Steve Jones
In 100 years a lot of what we take to be true now will...
Forums
AllocationType as ROW_OVERFLOW_DATA
Hello, I inherited a number of tables with like 20-30 column using nvarchar(256) in...
is it true we cant debug c# scripts in ssis anymore under vs
Hi, i'm running vs2022. I'm trying out a c# script that i'd like to...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers